General News

According to the latest Mapping SEVIS by the Numbers update from last month, there are currently 31,389 Vietnamese students in the US at all levels of the education system. (2.59% of all international students in the US are from Viet Nam.)

Viet Nam remains in 5th place sandwiched between Saudi Arabia, which experienced the sharpest decline among the top 10 sending countries, and Canada, which saw a small increase from May 2017.

Here are two changes from the end of the 2016/17 academic year to now that likely signal trends:

1) A decrease in the percentage of Vietnamese students enrolled in “language training” from 10.7% to 8.5%.

2) An increase in the percentage of Vietnamese undergraduates enrolled in four-year schools from 29.7% to 31.8%. (To put this in perspective, 90% of all Vietnamese undergrads in the US were enrolled in a community college in 2009/10.)

The top 10 host states remained the same. The only change is that Pennsylvania displaced Florida. Massachusetts, which remained in 4th place, saw the most significant increase.

CA: 6175

TX: 5232

WA: 2548

MA: 1815

NY: 1396

PA: 1276

FL: 1223

IL: 967

VA: 889

GA: 712

While there are Vietnamese students in all 50 states, 71%, rounded up, are studying in these 10 states, a statistically insignificant decrease from May 2017. This, of course, means that 29% are in the remaining 40 states and Puerto Rico, which has one (1).

To drill down a bit deeper, 44.45% are in California, Texas, and Washington state. I discuss some of the reasons for this in a September 2017 article I wrote for VNExpress International. (The bluer the state, the more Vietnamese students are studying there.)

Stay tuned for a post in which I analyze this information in light of other trends in what I refer to as the perfect storm of converging factors that include the recent spike in the number of Vietnamese students studying in Canada, increasing competition within and outside of the US, and various sociopolitical factors.